


At Death's Door

by JayBarou



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, M/M, Persephone inspired, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:21:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4681883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young man bumps into Hela one day; he is smitten and he wants a story from her.<br/>Hela tells him how her parents found a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Death's Door

**Author's Note:**

> There are... at least four deaths, but I have not tagged them. There are mentions of torture, which I don't describe in detail.  
> Also, Hela is making it all sound pretty, Tony wouldn't like the tale. He'd say it is too pretty.  
> (07 feb 2016) I rewrote the whole thing, but if someone wants the previous version, I have saved it, so ask and I'll send it.)

Yggdrasil doesn't have many people walking on the branches, but those who dare to use that way, find a labyrinth. Not one of the races has been able to map it, so Yggdrasil stays as unexplored as the day it was born. Trailing the few well-known paths is still a feat for the reckless or desperate ones. That's the reason why a young walker of the Yggdrasil finds himself discarding unfamiliar ways and taking rushed turns. However, by now, all the ways look unfamiliar, even the one he came from. He is a stubborn young thing, though, so he plans to wait long enough to still his racing heart and keep going.

While he is resting, a woman comes to him, a woman who is said to be a legend, a woman who knows death with half of her heart but thrives with life in her other half. The young man is in awe of her. She might know the way out, but the need to leave is not as compelling as before she arived. He knows her, or knows of her, but his mind keeps slipping. Whithout knowing why, he dares to talk to her.

"Stay." She didn't look like she was going to leave, but she was distant, and the young thing's words make her turn and see him. "Tell me a story," he says, and he doesn't know why. He should be asking for the way out, but he wants a story just so he can admire her for a few minutes.

The ethereal woman turns to look ahead, as if the future was waiting for her and only her.

"My burdens are many; royalty over the lost souls comes with a price." She looks at the young walker. "But I can spare some time if it is for a story." 

The young man's chest fills with an unknown thill. He stays respectfully quiet while the woman, no, not woman, the... Hela -Yes, Hela is the name his poor malfunctioning mind gives him- He stays quiet until Hela finds a story.

"I learnt the weaving of stories when I had barely started existing. There is one story I can't tell when those who taught me are present, so let me make you my abettor, and don't tell a soul." He nods, simply delighted, because her voice is a thing of wonder.

 

 

> _As all stories, it started once upon a time; many times, stories start with a birth..._
> 
>  

She speaks with the voice of one accustomed to collecting others' stories and sharing them. The man can almost feel the words going though him and taking his breath with them. 

 

 

> _...but this one started at the end of two prolific lives._
> 
> _The first one had been a life of wrong choices, redemption, and a will to keep living so strong that death couldn’t take all of him. It was the soul of a man with a hole for a heart, and in life he was known as Anthony. Untill this day, some unwise voices still claim the hole means he is incapable of loving._
> 
>  

"Vile lies, all of them. The hole is there because he gives his heart away all to easily," she said in a furtive voice, out of the story and making the man feel giddy as when he was younger and his sister brought the wine soaked bread that they shouldn't be eating.

 

 

> _The soul with a hole was lost in death for a long time. He was scared, he was alone, he was withouth a single light in the horizon and he was slowly losing hope. He only had his will to live and his memories of a good life._
> 
> _He used his tenacious will to search the vastness of death. It was an ingrate task, for death is endless, and makes one feel blind even if it is not dark, nor light. However Anthony was diligent in his search. He kept going on for such a long time that he might have walked three times as much as he had lived. Hope never wavered, not for long, and his sanity was always about to cease existing._
> 
> _In the end, he found another lost soul. The will to live of the poor thing wasn’t as strong, they were wilting and fading, but the soul with a hole didn’t let them go, and together they kept looking for other lost souls. I never learned the name of that second soul, I doubt they even remembered their own name, because death is all-consuming when one can't stall it with tales of hope._
> 
> _Time bore results and the soul with a hole found a handful of lost minds, always with weaker wills than him, always in the verge of giving up hope. When the group was too big to keep traveling, Anthony taught them to hope as he did. They had nothing to hope for, not a single wish inside them anymore, they had followed him as a beacon of a half-remembered life, no more. So Anthony shared the memories of his good life with those around him and he called it a home._
> 
> _The home, the idea of it, radiated warmth and was more brillant with the new memories that other souls piled together after following the example of the first one. Small things they managed to restore from the well of death. The place with the idea of home became a flare. One last promise for souls near and far, and so, lost souls started to come on their own, while stronger souls, invigorated by that place, started to walk away in search of others._
> 
> _The soul with a hole for a heart was never satisfied. Anthony had found life in death and he wanted to retrieve all the lost ones: every single one. He worried his newfound company when he left to retrieve more souls; they feared one day he wouldn’t return and Home would be lost with him. So far he had always returned, and never alone._
> 
> _One day, in one of his trips he found a different soul. Not much was different in death, any little new thing had to be scratched from the claws of forgotten memories, so the new thing intigued Anthony beyond measure. The soul had his eyes burnt and absolutely no will to live; he had a very strong death-wish instead. The Soul with the hole didn't understand the paradox, but before he could do much, a ripple of suffering made the new soul vanish._
> 
> _Surprised, he decided to stay there and wait. He wanted to see the suffering soul again, he wanted to help him._
> 
> _What he didn’t know was that the suffering soul was alive and, by chance, had been suffering since the day of Anthony's death. He was a prince named Loki who was paying for the slights that an old and bitter king had accused him of, true and imagined alike. The king had decreed that the prince was to remain tied while poison was dropped on his eyes. The poison wasn’t enough to kill him, but many days and nights had passed, the prince didn’t fathom an end to the torture, and he no longer wanted to live._
> 
> _His wish to die was so strong that he started to reach his eternal rest for short periods of time, until pain awakened nis nerves harashly again. That was his half-life for a long time, a life of endless pain and a fake death that brought him rest, only to feel pain more sharply when he went back to his punishment._
> 
> _Then one day he found company in death. And during the following death, and the next after that, because the Soul with a hole patiently waited for his return and during each visit Anthony guided him closer to that place called home._
> 
> _The suffering soul looked forward to death more than ever, because the soul with a hole was kind to him, and that healed wounds that no poison could reopen in life. Home welcomed them with open arms and after centuries of suffering, tied to his rock, the suffering soul responded in kind to the relative warmth of home._
> 
> _Home grew much when the suffering soul was there, because, strange as it sounded, he loved with abandon being dead. He shared everything he had and Home became a city, and the city became as great and splendorous as any of the other realms. Loki, the soul that only suffered in life, created a world of their own with Anthony._
> 
> _Anthony grew to love him with everything he was, and he couldn’t stand seeing pain unraveling him every so often and taking him from his side. He couldn’t go back to finish what the king had started and so cruelly prolonged, but he couldn’t stand idle either._
> 
> _The soul with the hole crossed his kingdom looking for a solution, for he had shaped it, and he knew it was built in memories and beliefs. Their Home was more powerful than ever since the suffering soul had made it outstanding. Finally, Anthony found an orchad that Loki had grown from a fond memory._
> 
> _The soul with a hole for a heart took one of the golden apples from the always-sunny orchad. It didn’t reflect his image, but the spirit of a thousand memories. That was the kind of power that would take to tie Loki to death, but it needed to be more. He planted the apple whole and kneeled on the ground. Home fed from ideas, its very soil was ilusion, so Anthony poured all his hopes, all the futures he had imagined with a Loki who no longer suffered, and he gave them to the ground. It meant that he would not remember any of those futures until he imagined them again on his own, but it was a small price in exchange for the healthy apple tree that grew after days of effort._
> 
> _The apples of that tree didn't hold golden memories, the apples it grew were dark outside, and deep red inside, with a grainy texture that Anthony vaguely remembered as something he had seen when he was ailve. It wasn't exactly an apple, but in every grain one could feel the seed of new things and opportunities. And it had many seeds, not only the four or five that were contained in an apple. Anthony ran back with the fruit to wait and meet the suffering soul._
> 
> _The offer was accepted with tears of joy and shows of love so strong that threatened to meld them together as one. The suffering man ate the fruit and with a final painful heartbeat, he finally stopped suffering, embracing death like his true home. And seeing Loki eat and die, Anthony felt like death wasn't a good name for their home, their state, not when he could still feel so much._
> 
> _That could be the end of the story for Loki and Anthony, but fates still had a twist for them._
> 
> _One day, there was a knock on the gates of their realm. The first knock could have been a mistake, a noise lost in time that found its way to them, the second was a surprise, but still a coincidence and doubt... by the third knock the whole realm had fallen silent. The monarchs didn’t know of the existence any such door, so it had been unexpected._
> 
> _There was, indeed, a great door that had never before existed. It could have been magic, it could have been a lost soul's wish, or maybe something else. Nobody was a complete expert in how death worked. Therefore, they oppened it with trepidation._
> 
> _On the other side they found a living man who rode an eight-legged steed. Loki's eyes grew colder than ever since he died as he announced his father, the king who transformed him into the suffering soul. Anthony then remembered a rage only comparable with what he had once felt, long ago, when he was alive._
> 
> _The cruel king had come to accuse Anthony of stealing the suffering soul, kidnapping him, keeping him against his will in the domains of Death. At the same time, the king also said that the man with the hole in his chest had liberated Loki from his deserved punishment and robbed others of the opportunity to see the prince’s suffering._
> 
> _He theatened with cutting the branch of the Ygdrassil where, apparently, their city had taken root without the inhabitants' knowledge. They still stood, they didn't mind starting their city anew, they had too many good memories to simply be destroyed by earthly means. The king had more threats for them._
> 
> _The monarchs of Death couldn’t pass the threshold, since they no longer lived, and Yggdrasil only knows what would happen if they crosed, but they wanted to dragg the other king into their domains and let him get lost in the distance. The cruel king, however, had a last accusation, not designed to get Loki back, since he could see he wouldn't get away with that, but simply to hurt: Anthony had robbed a mother of her child and now all of her subjects suffered with her._
> 
> _Anthony wondered how that mother could have endured seeing her child suffering torture daily. He wondered what twisted heart she had if she mourned a child who had stopped suffering. Loki didn’t see it that way: he loved his mother, and the couldn’t stand knowing that she languished without him by her side._
> 
> _Anthony, in turn, loved him very much. That was why, after closing the gates of their realm to the cruel king, he found a way to allow Loki to visit his mother in dreams half of the time while he lived and spent the rest of the time in the Home they had built. Loki was grateful and blessed their home with happiness every time he wasn’t with his mother._
> 
> _The woman passed away eventually, and she was welcomed in the city as an old friend. Anthony didn’t resent her and neither did she, because both knew that the other made Loki happy and that was enough for them._

The ethereal woman ends her tale there, with a kind smile, and waits until the man who walked Yggdrasil is ready to speak again. The man takes a minute to let the story stop echoing inside him. the he looks at her kind but distant smile and feels the need to comment.

"They were brave, to stand before the king like that. I... I think I have been told a similar story before, in school, the legend of the foundation of Helheim, but your voice makes it sound so familiar, even though I've never met them, it even makes me long for thier compamy. Although, I do wonder what they did when the king died."

She only laughs a pearly rich laugh that further enthralls the man.

"Upon his death, he wandered the dark plains for hundreds of years. When time shredded all his memories from him, he was accepted in the city, but he was never allowed to add to the creation."

The man has many more questions, but the most pressing is if the monarchs are her parents, as he suspects. His mind is addled, overexposure to the Yggdrasil, maybe, but he isn't, wasn't stupid, in life. This life. He asks quietly.

She nods pleasantly.

The man mimics her, nodding to himself and looks around. The branch of Yggdrasil that he is looking for has to be very close, people must be waiting for him on the other side. He wonders how far he is, and if he is _too far._ He wonders where is the point of no return. People come back talking about tunels, dark, light, voices, brushing the veil of death is dangerous and strange. He has to move and leave.

He tries to say his goodbyes to Hela, but he doesn't walk away, because he still can’t find the branch. He can’t recognize anything; maybe he should have waited a year or two before trying, as his uncle had said. Slipping is easy in that time of the year. 

The man looks at the queen and he starts to suspect he did found the point of no return. His mind isn't getting any better, he looks around, and at her again, wanting to hear it. She patiently explains there is no way out anyore, because he is no longer. He felt light, loosing himself, mourning his own death, if the realization really hit, he wasn't sure he'd stand it, so it was fortunate that he wasn't thinking straight. Hela still talked. And what she said placated the mourning feeling. Apparently, he had been wandering for a very long time, much much longer than he had thought, and she had come to guide him Home. 

Home sounded like a good place to go, so he followed in peace.


End file.
